I went to see the movie "National Treasure"

Since the runtime is nearly three hours, even the AI suggested that I might want to go see it in two sittings. Well, I am an old person, so 👵 heave-ho.

I went on June 9th, but the question is whether or not I should write about it here. Maybe I should have just written it in the comments section of Yahoo Movies. I like Kabuki, but I don't go to see it all that often.

I like it, so I only went to see it occasionally. I'm just a country bumpkin who realized how amazing Kabuki really is when I went to see the final performance at the Kabukiza Theatre in December 1998 and saw people like Tetsuya Chikushi and former Minister of Education Ryoko Akamatsu.

Oh, that's right, I think it was May 5, 2004, when the current 13th Danjuro Hakuen succeeded to the name Ebizo, I saw it from a pretty good seat. A friend of mine at the time was a go-getter and got the tickets for me. You can probably tell from how sporadic my visits are, but going to see Kabuki is a special event for me. Because I'm just an ordinary person.

Precisely because I am an ordinary person, I treasure the memory of what I saw and when, treating it like a "family treasure" rather than a national one. I also managed to get tickets myself for the February 2006 performance of Tamasaburo and Kikunosuke's "Futari Dojoji" (you know, that one, the one that became Cinema Kabuki). I bought them and ended up on the far right side of the second-floor balcony facing the stage. It was wonderful. It was moving. Both of them were truly beautiful, oh my god, oh my god!!! You know they have different heights, right? I could clearly see from the second-floor balcony how they adjusted their positions. At the end, when they climbed onto the bell, I saw Tamasaburo helping Kikunosuke, and I became convinced, "What a wonderful person," and ever since then, I've been a fan of ❤️Tamasaburo❤️.

In the movie "National Treasure," Min Tanaka was cast as the great onnagata (female role actor) "Mankiku." The friend who got me the tickets for the Danjuro succession I mentioned earlier was a huge fan of ❤️the 4th Jakuemon❤️, and since she also loved Jakuemon, she must still be a patron of the 5th Jakuemon today. The role was a bit reminiscent of that Jakuemon. Maybe a bit of the 6th Utaemon was in there too. Min Tanaka is amazing. He really looked the part.

However, the amazing thing about real Kabuki actors is that they are beautiful. Both the 4th Jakuemon and the 6th Utaemon were beautiful, even if it killed them. Even in their final years, they became young girls, truly cute. It must be the result of many years of training, but it's almost like a superpower. When making the movie, Ganjiro Nakamura appeared as a great actor, but they didn't really have them "compete" on stage. I understood that they probably didn't have them perform together because the difference would be obvious if they were mixed.

Teruyuki Kagawa is calling himself "Chusha Nakamura" and working as a Kabuki actor, but if I may be so rude, he looks a bit unkempt. A long time ago, there was an actor named Hashizo Okawa who was active in television and movies, but when I saw a video of him playing a daughter's role on stage, I also thought he looked "unkempt." Perhaps this is just an unavoidable part of a Kabuki actor's "professional skill." I'd like to think about that a bit.

So, what I want to say is that Ryosuke Yoshizawa's "Kikuo" -> "Hanjiro" was stunningly beautiful. No, really. As usual, the unkempt "Tokubei" was his partner, and I almost felt sorry for him. The fact that the "understudy" role that becomes a big hit and a stepping stone to success for a first-time performer is "Ohatsu" in Sonezaki Shinju is likely derived from the original work, but it is a choice that makes you nod and say, "That makes sense."

I fondly remember when the current Ganjiro's grandfather, the 2nd Ganjiro, collapsed before the stage of "Sonezaki Shinju," and his son Tomotaro (the current Ganjiro), who was a Keio University student at the time, stood in as the understudy for "Tokubei." I remember that after the first performance, the second performance was broadcast on television, and I recorded it on a Sony Beta video cassette and watched it over and over. I think he mentioned later that it was easy to perform because he could naturally follow the flow of the psychology.

Yoshizawa's Ohatsu was good. It made me cry. That's enough for me, and I have no complaints. I'm glad I went to see it. I'm very satisfied. Do you have any complaints? I was also grateful that the camera was placed in positions that would never be possible in an actual Kabuki performance.